Word: drexel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...famed Drexel Burnham junk-bond conference -- Peltz seated at a table with Boesky and T. Boone Pickens, among others. As Milken strides by, someone gushes, "Congratulations, Mike. You're a genius!" "No," Milken snaps back sarcastically, for all to hear. "Nelson Peltz here is a genius. I'm nothing...
...skeptics still doubt that the 1980s were an era of mindless greed on Wall Street, Dennis Levine's account of his rise and fall as an inside trader should set them straight. Levine, a megadeal meister for the now bankrupt Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, raked in more than $10 million through the simple expedient of buying and selling stock with the help of inside tips. Arrested in 1986 and jailed for 17 months in a minimum-security prison, he led prosecutors to arbitrager Ivan Boesky, who, in turn, helped them reel in the biggest fish of all -- junk...
...procedures of most insurers, Executive Life had blazed a fast track to spectacular growth, grabbing market share by offering higher payouts on annuities and charging lower fees than most of its competitors. To meet its growing obligations, the insurer plunged headlong into the high-yield bond market controlled by Drexel Burnham's Michael Milken and puffed up its $10.1 billion asset base with $6.4 billion in risky junk bonds. Once the junk-bond market fizzled in 1989, First Executive Corp., Executive Life's holding company, began to sustain huge losses. California insurance officials are now investigating other large insurers...
During its heyday, Executive Life swam with the sharks. When raider Charles Hurwitz took over San Francisco-based Pacific Lumber in 1986 with the help of $900 million in Drexel junk bonds, for example, First Executive Corporation, bought more than one-third of those bonds. Once in charge, Hurwitz terminated the pension plan and grabbed the $55 million worth of surplus pension funds to pay down part of his buyout debt. He then bought $38 million worth of Executive Life annuities to cover 2,500 people, thus shedding his obligations and saving himself the cost of the premiums...
Similarly, when corporate raider Ronald Perelman seized Revlon in 1985, First Executive helped finance the $2.7 billion takeover, buying $370 million worth of Drexel's junk bonds. Perelman shut down Revlon's pension plan and skimmed off at least $50 million in "excess funding." He then rolled existing pension obligations into Executive Life annuities. Says Eli Schefer, a retired Revlon engineer in Sands Point, N.Y.: "Those were cozy deals, not done according to fiduciary standards. These guys should be thrown in jail. Now that I am almost 72, I've got to worry about when my next pension check...